Crazy Sweet (25 page)

CHAPTER

34

T
HIS COULD BE your worst idea ever,” Gillian said, looking out over the crowd of professors, alumni, and benefactors of the University of Arizona filling up the ballroom of the exclusive Kittredge Mark Hotel on the outskirts of Phoenix.

“No,” Travis disagreed. “I’ve definitely had worse.”

“None involving me.”

He grinned, without conceding anything.

“Come on,” he said, directing her down the stairs to the main level. “This is therapy.”

“This is nuts.”

“Let me know if you recognize anybody.”

Unlikely, she thought. Everyone looked alike, the whole crowd of people, the women in long dresses, the men in black-tie, the caterers in white, the small orchestra in red jackets and black pants. The colors were all different, the styles and shapes of their clothes, some more elegant than others, but the ease with which it all was worn looked the same: They belonged.

She did not.

Angel did.

No one wore a tuxedo with more style than Travis James, especially one of Dylan Hart’s Armani tuxedos. He was by far the most outrageously handsome man in the room. He was also, without doubt, the deadliest, and yet nothing in his demeanor gave him away.

She felt exposed, like a walking advertisement for the killing arts. Nothing about her fit in with the people around her.

Everyone else looked satisfied, in their place, in their element, all of them buzzing around each other and the buffet tables laden with a dazzling assortment of food and lush bouquets of flowers. She did not “buzz,” ever. She was always in stealth mode, a shadow, but it was damn hard to maintain that illusion dressed in red Versace and four-inch heels.

The event was fund-raising at its highest end, an auction for the benefit of the Environmental Sciences labs at the university, where she’d worked before she’d gone to Washington, D.C. and taken a job with General Grant. There were cruises to be had, one to Antarctica; lots of European travel; plasma televisions; lots of high-tech goodies; two automobiles, one with four-wheel drive; and one painting—a very large painting, which had been donated anonymously and sold for an outrageous amount of money and which would soon be hanging in its new home, on permanent display at the university.

Gillian wasn’t sure what had compelled her to do it. Part of the healing process, Dr. Brandt had suggested, an honest gesture made in an effort to reach out and reclaim part of her past, but Gillian didn’t think that was quite the reason behind her generosity.

She and Travis had toured the Environmental Sciences labs earlier in the day, along with the other benefit attendees, and nothing had sparked a memory, not the facility or any of the people, including a man named Ken, who had apparently been her husband at one point in time, before he’d left her for a very pregnant, blotchy-faced woman named Kimberly who had also not registered anywhere in Gillian’s mind. Gillian had done her research before she’d come, and this was Ken and Kimberly’s second child they were expecting. A lot of people had been on the tour, too many for either of them to easily approach her, but she’d known they were watching her, slightly confused, and wondering who she was, really.

She understood. She’d seen pictures of herself “before,” and there was little left. Nothing in her bone structure had been altered, but without a certain softness in her face, without a certain air of scatterbrained preoccupation, there was no Gillian Pentycote. She was all Red Dog, from the top down.

And she’d donated a very expensive painting of her very naked boyfriend to her old university. She had some mental quirks, no one could deny it, and that was one of the quirkiest. She was sure the gesture was Freudian as hell.

“I know this is real important to Dr. Brandt, this whole retracing-my-life schtick, but…” She’d had enough.

“But we’re moving on,” Travis agreed.

She knew he understood. In the last few months, they’d visited just about every place Gillian Pentycote had ever been. But she was done. She had enough of her past to get by.

“And we’re going to keep moving,” she said.

“Work hard, work fast, babe.”

“Stay low.”

“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”

“Keep your powder dry.”

“Yeah, that one, too.” He grinned, then bent down and pressed a soft kiss to her face. “Here’s to the future.”

“That’s where we’re going, right, Angel?”

“Oh, yeah. You can count on it.” He kissed her again, moving his mouth over her face, sliding his lips across her skin, holding her hand tight. “We’re going into the future, baby…at light speed.”

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on the limb All I remember is thinking I want to be like them.

—“Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Writing the CRAZY books has been a great ride from the minute I buckled into Jeanette the Jet and realized how much power and growl there could be in three hundred and eighty-three cubic inches of displacement hooked up to a pair of headers. Along the way, there have been some very talented and generous people in the shotgun seat.

My thanks and love go to Stan, as always, for being the bedrock. Thanks, also, to Nigel, who so kindly shared his encyclopedic knowledge about classic American muscle cars. Cindy Gerard—well, it’s hard to adequately express what a huge impact she had on the books, from conception, inception, incubation, and making damn sure I toed the line. I owe her more than thanks. Rebecca flat-out deserves sainthood.

And then there are the wild boys and the gun diva—sometimes life hands us an unexpected gift. I got three when I walked into Colorado Gunworks wondering what it actually felt like to hold a pistol in your hand: Cullen “you had me at hello” Honeycutt, whose knowledge and generosity have been exceeded only by his kindness; the smokin’ hot Tel Gallegos, gunpowder therapist extraordinaire; and Karl Kirov, who stopped by the shop one day and immediately started teaching me what I didn’t know.

He’s still at it.

All the mistakes in the books are mine, especially the one about the Glock in
Crazy Love
. As for Steele Street and SDF, look for more books about the chop-shop boys, beginning with
On the Loose
.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TARA JANZEN lives in Colorado with her husband, children, and two dogs, and is now at work on her next novel. Of the mind that love truly is what makes the world go ’round, she can be contacted at
www.tarajanzen.com
.
Happy reading!

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ON SALE NOW

CRAZY
SWEET

D ANGEROUS.

A sheer red silk muscle shirt didn’t leave anything to the imagination, especially not the size, the shape, or the delicacy of the black lace bra she was wearing underneath it.

He bought her a lot of black lace.

Her worn denim jeans had silver studs running down the right leg and were so tight, they should have come with a warning label. A small chamois fanny pack was slung around her waist. Pale ostrich-leather cowboy boots covered her feet. Stacked heels, pointed toes, and worn vamps, they’d seen a lot of long days in a dozen Third World hellholes over the last two years—the two years since Red Dog had created herself from a blank slate and a heart hungry for revenge. She was five feet, five inches of pure, unadulterated, ass-kicking girl, and every day she pushed him. She pushed him hard.

Sometimes he wondered if either of them would survive the trip she was on.

“I’d sure take a piece of that,” the man at the table continued, his voice hoarse in a way Travis understood only too well—which did nothing to improve his mood.

“Forget it,” another guy said. “That one would just as soon gut you as fu—”

Travis reached back, grabbed the last man by the scruff of his collar, and hauled him around until they were face-to-face.

“Don’t,” he said, very clearly, very succinctly, and very…very calmly.

Rising from his bar stool, he pulled the guy’s face even closer to his.

“Don’t say it. Don’t think it.”

Fear flashed through the man’s eyes, and Travis understood that, too. It had been a hard two years since the night Red Dog had lost her first life and started on her second, and those two years, on the front line with Special Defense Force, a group of black ops warriors based in
Denver
,
Colorado
, had changed him. Only one person ever mistook him for anything close to an angel anymore.

Letting go of the man’s shirt, he started toward the end of the bar and the woman standing there, waiting for him.

Gillian Pentycote—that had been her name before Dr. Souk, a maniacal physician in the employ of a drug lord, had shot her full of an experimental “truth serum” called XT7 and stolen her memories. By the time Travis and his teammate, Skeeter B. Hart, had gotten to her, there had been nothing left but her screams and four images burned into her brain—only four.

His steps faltered for the barest fraction of a second, less than a heartbeat’s worth of pause.